#187: Is Blame Destroying Your Relationship? Here’s What to Do Instead

Do you find yourself caught in the blame game, constantly pointing fingers and feeling the strain that it puts on yourself and your relationship? The truth is, the blame game creates emotional gaps, turning each disagreement into a struggle over who's right and who's wrong. It also chips away our trust. It builds resentments and leaves you both feeling distant, emotionally drained and misunderstood. Each accusation can stab you right in the heart, punch you in the gut, making it harder and harder to find common ground and solutions to move you forward. This ongoing tension can shift your home from a place of love and connection to a battleground of frustration and emotional pain. If this resonates with you right now, I want you to know you're not alone. Welcome to Love Shack Live, the podcast for listeners who find themselves at a relationship crossroads. It's here where we tackle daily conflicts and the emotional gaps that can make your bond feel distant. Our Our mission is to help you rebuild a connection that's genuine and lasting. I'm Stacey Bartley, your host, and I'm joined by my co host and lover, Tom and our daughter Brooke. Together we bring decades of experience and a personal touch to help you navigate your relationship challenges. Today, we're diving into a crucial topic. Have you ever wondered if the blame game is doing more harm than good? Is there, by chance, a better way to address the underlying issues with without pointing fingers, what about who takes accountability and responsibility? And what about everybody's intentions? Does it matter? Stay with us as we explore how shifting from blame to understanding can transform your relationship. We're going to share with you real life examples, practical tips and insights to help you find a healthier and happy way forward.

Hey, thank you for coming. Welcome to the Love Show, Jack.

So let's talk about our common tendencies and ideas, our mindsets, if you will. When it comes to the concept of blame in relationships, is assigning blame going to help us when things go wrong? It's often what we do because when we feel hurt and our feelings get hurt, the disappointment or the betrayal or all the myriad of unwanted, awkward emotions hit us, we have a tendency to want, to attack, to defend, to punish, to push away, yes, to blame. It's a natural reaction that has been modeled to us for probably all of our life. We see it not only in the homes in which we live in, but. But we see it in the world in which we live in. The common narrative when we know we're blaming somebody because we've been hurt is, well, you're going to make them pay, right? Like, well, they're going to have to pay for that. Whether that means getting cut out, pushed out, locked up, or hung. It's where we go in our natural human inclination to defend ourselves. And if we don't feel like we do that, then we start to feel weak, taken advantage of, going along with putting up with being taken advantage of. The idea here is we think if we can simply identify the guilty party, make them pay, penalize them, the issue of emotional pain will be resolved. Now, listener, just take a moment right now before we go anywhere and think for yourself. How do you hold this idea? Where do you go and what do you feel is necessary when somebody hurts your feelings, betrays you, forgets about you, dismisses you, dishonors you? For me, I know for a lot of years in my life, I used to believe it was just downright malicious that you were intentionally hurting my feelings or you were intentionally doing these things to me. Therefore, I must make you pay. How about for you? Where do you go? For most of us, it actually takes us in the direction we don't want to go. It actually feeds and perpetuates the emotion that we're feeling. And the more I think about it, and the more I obsess about how malicious or intentional or wrong it was, the worse we feel, the more we break down, and the more we start exaggerating what it is I need to do to make them pay. And so these things will grow. I got an apology, but I didn't feel like it was good enough, and I didn't feel like they meant it. And then they did it again. And so now what am I going to do? What's my next step in this line of thinking? To make them pay, I might cut them off of sex. I'm not having sex with you because you did these things. Okay, and then what's the next step we're going to do? I'm going to cut you off of sex, and I'm not going to talk to you anymore. Okay, and then what's the next line? Now I'm going to tell you to move out, and you've got 30 days. Okay. Where along the pathway did we acquire any solutions, clean up any misunderstandings for ourselves, our partners, and what is going on in our relationship? I just kept pushing the edge, cutting you off financially, cutting you off sexually, cutting you off from communication, making you sleep on the couch. Then ultimately it ends up severing the relationship altogether if I'm going to continue the escalation game. And so when we think about it, this idea of pay never takes us where we want to go. I just keep justifying, maybe mistreat, talking to you, cutting you off, all of the things that I do because you did these things. Well, now I'm doing these things, too.

I was just going to say that's. Correct me if I'm wrong. We often say this. Depending on how long you've listened to us. You're turning into a version of the very thing that you're fighting against what you just described. Right. Again, we're not dismissing the disappointment and the pain. Please hear us. We are not saying that. What we're suggesting is there's much different ways and more effective ways to go about this. Rather than assigning blame. Most of us think if we get this blame thing figured out correctly and have him or her pay enough, they get their stuff together, come back, everything's going to be fine. Nothing could be further from the truth or.

Well, and it's like we'll spend all of our time in conversations there. We can't talk about moving on because we have to clean up and hold somebody accountable and make somebody pay, and then somehow we're going to go, aha. I guess this is the moment where I feel better without realizing I'm never going to feel better. And where I'm living is a bottomless pit. It's a dark, black hole that we feed and we feed and we feed and we become perpetually stuck in. In pain. And that's what blaming will do. It perpetuates a cycle of negativity and prevents genuine solutions from surfacing because of how we're presenting it, how we're holding it, how we're showing up. So all we talk about is all the problems and the experiences of the past. And what we do want and need never even comes up in the conversation. It is completely wiped out and dismissed. I mean, we can't talk about what we want until we figure out the. We can't go and have fun and sex and play and engage with my partner, who I say I'm gonna build my rest of my life with until they pay. Right? And we don't realize that that is what's going to choke the life out of your relationship. So here's the deal, listener. I want you to make a pledge to me right now. From here on out, I'm going to make it a lot easier for you when it comes to playing the blame game. I'm going to invite you to blame me. Blame me because I've not yet talked about it on the podcast. Blame me because I haven't quite given you the framework in order to move through this. And then let's move on, let's get to where we need to go. Because I'm going to tell you right now, that's about as effective as you trying to figure out which one of you in the relationship has the longer rap sheet and has done the most dastardly, intentionally malicious things. I don't care how much evidence you have to pull out, because we all have it. Because here's the thing, as human beings, we're all exceptionally messy and we make mistakes. My favorite example of this in day to day life is we're all driving a car and we've all driven distracted and we've probably all cut somebody off, right? Intentionally or not intentionally probably. And yet we still want to flip somebody off when they cut us off. Forgetting that I do it too. And relationships are so much like that. I do it too. But when you do it, it really pisses me off. So now I have to make you pay. And oh, I know why I was doing it. And it wasn't malicious, unintentional at all. It was just simply a mistake. So I get a hall pass. That's how we hold this.

Also, I want to say that when we do shitty things in our relationships and we do shitty behaviors to our partner, it's usually not when we're in a good mental health space. You know what I mean? Like we're not making these mistakes or hurting your feelings. On days when we're feeling so good about ourselves, it's usually when we're feeling probably really bad about ourselves and that is just spilling over into the way that I'm interacting with you. So then when we're making them pay for it, it's just putting them further and further down in this spiral of shame and worthlessness and feeling like, oh God, I felt so bad about myself and then I did that thing and I feel even worse about myself and now they won't even talk to me. Yeah, I understand that they shouldn't have hurt your feelings in the first place, but you're doing the same thing back to them, so why is that okay? No one should have done it. It's like this never ending cycle of making each other pay and it just makes us feel worse and worse and worse and worse about ourselves and it just disintegrates our self worth in the relationship.

How many times do we, the three of us hear from people that we work with? It feels like we're just going round and around and around because you are. Yeah, you're doing the exact cycle that Brooke just described. And that's nobody's fault. But there are very much more effective ways to navigate upset we're gonna have. We're gonna make messes, we're gonna get triggered. That's not what we're talking about here.

Well, and then we get on this very delicate tight wire in our relationships because, you know, the pain and the conflict are at an all time high. Our relationship couldn't be more fragile. And so if you make a mistake when your relationship is at that point, you want to talk about being punished and blamed your circle of influence saying what a shitbag you are for doing that when your relationship was already so fragile. How does that make any sense? Those two things don't go together at all. Like, if your relationship is so fragile, it shouldn't be handled that way. And we wonder why they crumble and fall apart at this point. Because you've lost all empathy and you've stopped treating each other like humans and you only are treating each other as the mistakes that you've made.

Well, and then even as we deepen the narrative, you know what we have a tendency to do. I don't want to be blamed for ending this relationship, so I'm going to insist you do it. If you want to leave, then just go ahead so that I can blame you for walking out. I can blame you for ending it even though I'm miserable as hell. But I'm not going to end it because I don't want to be blamed for ending our 22 year relationship. And I'm going to tell the kids, well, it was your mother or your father who ended this. That's kind of like the last piece of blame to fall without realizing again, what are you accomplishing here? Does it really matter who ends it? It does not. But it adds to the story. So I want to teach you right now on this podcast how in a very simplistic way our thinking works. Because here's how it rolls. And it plays so nicely into this blame game that we play. Play. And when we understand how the brain flows, then we're going to start to understand why we typically go where we go. We're also going to understand why culturally, societally, we have these predispositions to like, get the pitchfork, make them pay, blame them. That's what's going to solve everything. And I hope that you're starting to understand if we really sit and be with this, we understand it doesn't take us anywhere. It takes us to A shit show with uncanny precision. So in my brain, when I have an emotional experience, I'm going to immediately form a conclusion about what this means about somebody's intentions. And I can go all kinds of places in my conclusions, but it happens in 22 seconds. If 22 seconds. It might even be quicker than that for really plugged in. And then you know what my brain is going to do? It's like leaving the train station. It's going to leave the train station and my brain, without even having to think about it, is going to go and it's going to gather all the evidence that it possibly can to support the conclusion that I've just come to. And in that place, this is how when we start reacting, all of a sudden we started talking about you load the dishwasher wrong, but now we're talking about last year's Christmas party where you got too drunk. Why? Because I'm pulling evidence. And the evidence that I'm pulling is reminiscent of this same time, the last time I had this feeling with you, and I've got a plethora of it and I can be all over the board, oh, it was the Christmas party. But you know, remember the birthday party and then remember the living room and remember the conversation we had last week. It becomes nonsensical. But to me, the person who's feeling the emotion, it makes perfect sense that I'm connecting all these pieces of evidence to support my conclusion. And then I move to the next place. It's going to affect the way I show up. It's going to affect my behavior. So let's just back up a little bit. I'm going to swear here for a minute, just because I think it needs to be said, let's believe I think you're an that's my conclusion. You are such an. And then I go and find all the evidence to support the fact that you're an and I'm going to remember the Christmas party. I'm going to remember the words you spoke to me. I'm going to remember the things you said not only to me, but maybe the people that I've heard tell me that you've done these things or I've witnessed you've done these things.

How about the neighborhood block party? You were a real piece of work there.

And now we come to our current little stop on our train track. My behavior. How am I going to treat you if my conclusion is you're an and? All the evidence I've brought up is an and. By the way, my evidence is Real. It happened. How do I show up now? How is my behavior impacted by this? Well, I'm going to treat you like you're an aren't I? Yeah, hell yeah, I am. Which is going to make me a what? An straight up. Because you're an right. So I'm going to be an I get to do that to you. I get to be an because you're an okay.

You've earned the right to mistreat your partner.

Exactly. Which moves us to the next stop, which is others behavior. So if any of us as a human being are treated like we're an what are we probably going to get back?

Amazing how that works.

It's amazing how that work. And I want you to see the cause and effect there. And this is why our conversations fight. We fight like we do. Well, I'm doing this because you're doing that. Oh yeah? Well I did it worse. How you do it is terrible. Oh yeah? Well, I don't think so. I think the way you do it really sucks. That's not okay. Well, it's not okay when you do it. And we get nowhere. There's this cause and effect that we get stuck in. Everybody's doing it, by the way. And guess what happens? That interaction that we have that everybody is playing a participating role in will affirm our conclusion. And then the train leaves the station and we go round and round. Conclusion. Evidence. My behavior. Your behavior supports my conclusion. I gather more evidence. My behavior gets shittier. Your behavior gets shittier. And it supports our conclusion. Until right before I affirm my conclusion. In our cause and effect moment there is what I call a catalytic event. And that catalytic event is where we have the mother load of all motherlode fights. And that is the catalytic moment that makes me reconsider everything I'm thinking, right? It's when somebody says, I'm done not doing this anymore, I'm moving out. I get my and we go, whoa, wait a minute. That's a catalytic moment. Hold on. Maybe we should like rethink this. Maybe we should like rethink what it is we're doing and maybe bring a little more patience and compassion and empathy to the table and try and figure this out. And I want you to see catalytic moments, they're hard, they're challenging, they're painful, they're difficult. But it is the moment where we get to literally reevaluate our conclusions and make sure that we're on the right track or not. If we override them, we're done. They happen and will continue to happen because they provide that moment for us to reset and reevaluate. What are we doing? Let me just. Whoa, wait a minute. Maybe I need to rethink this conclusion.

I think you've just beautifully explained. A lot of people in the world are confused about how they can love their partner so much in the beginning of the relationship, and then they start to see them as an asshole. That's how you begin to see your partner as not the beautiful human that you fell in love with, but just this person that causes you pain.

This is one of the reasons why in my work I don't like labels. Because the minute I start taking a quiz and start labeling and diagnosing my partner is the minute I'm going to start treating them like it because of my conclusion. Sure, they help us understand, but when they become that thing, which they're not, they behave that way, but they're not that thing, then we treat them like they are that thing. And that's where we're going to find ourselves. On a train track just like this, with lots of catalytic moments to reset our thinking around it. And it usually takes us to a path of destruction. So I'm not a fan. I'm just not a fan. That person I call a narcissistic asshole. Well, they can behave that way, but so can all of us, given the right set of circumstances and moments. I'm sure we've all behaved that way. Going back to the idea that we all drive distracted, we can all be an asshole sometimes. It's in us all. We can be anything as a human being, and yet we give no hall passes, none whatsoever. But we feel like we deserve them ourselves. And so it is from this place that we need to become mindful about the conclusions that we're making up about our partners. And here's the thing. If the conclusion was pursuing something that I wanted out of something that happened that was very difficult, I could pursue a better path instead of pursuing the path of somebody's got to pay. For example, I could say, you really hurt my feelings. That was a really difficult thing you just said. And what I want and what I'd like us to pursue, if you're willing. Is this. Is that possible? Want to do that? Then we can go in a different direction and gather evidence and keep my behavior in check, which is my win, by the way. And it's probably going to help you and your behavior, the person I'm engaging with, also do better in the pursuit of a better idea, a better conclusion, better behavior for Us all. If I consistently justify and defend my terrible behavior, well, then we're just going to get caught in that cause and effect every time because we can't treat somebody justifiably, regardless of what's happened, to offset that. If I'm going to be an asshole and treat you like an asshole because you are an asshole, well, then I'm an. And you're going to react to me, and we've got to get out of that or we're not going to go anywhere. Good. Pursuing the want is the gem. Staying stuck and talking about all the terrible things you did and talking about all the evidence that I'm gathering to support a thing that was so painful and difficult for me will have us caught in this cause and effect. And so I need to choose to pursue the want. And once I get to the want, I can put this whole thought process on a different track, at least for myself. It might take you a minute to come along, but it's going to be a lot better than the alternative that we've already talked about. So the want is important.

What if I just can't let it go, though? I think what my partner did was so egregious and so painful, and I'm just obsessed with the fact that they need to pay for it. What if I feel like a lot of people get stuck in that erroneous way of thinking? What's one thing I can do besides focusing on the want that I can maybe soothe myself or figure out? You get what I mean?

Well, I would encourage you to dump it. Right? Sometimes we just need to vent it out. And so if that's a journaling process or a yelling and screaming process, as I've mentioned many times, I have a favorite place in a tree, and sometimes I just need to go scream it out so that I've said it so I can let it go. Or some people love to journal. Some people love to paint or do art or play music, or some people love to exercise to vet it out. And then we can come to a clear place of thinking. Because you're right, Brooke, I may not even be able to get to my want without doing that first. But then the thing that I want to point out in the pursuit of getting to that want is you want to understand why this is so difficult and challenging for you personally. What comes up for you and what is it you think would ease your experience that's going to be your want. It's probably, I need to be heard or I need to be appreciated more, or I'M feeling like I need some reassurance because I wonder if I even matter to you. I'm feeling ignored, dismissed, shoved off. I want to understand those things and why it is we're doing what we're doing. And I want to be able to ask for those things that I just mentioned. That's going to ease it for me. That's what I want to pursue. I need to vent it out before I can get to any path of clarity because I'm so emotionally overwhelmed and upset about it. If I'm a hot mess and I'm not fit for, you know, engaging in a productive conversation, then it's best I don't. It's best that I go work these things out for myself and come back with something that we can pursue instead of fight about knowing that that's for me. What would ease it? It would be, I'd really appreciate an apology or I'd really appreciate a hug, or I'd really appreciate some acknowledgment that you appreciate. Appreciate me, I matter to you, and that you're going to take the time to listen to me. And if somebody says, I'm not going to do that, well, then you know that they're still caught in their own track. Well, when you are, why don't you come get me? Because I'm not doing this with you, and that would be your best course of action. I also want to just point out here that it's not so much about what's happened circumstantially. It's about understanding what emotionally drives me to do that. Those are the things that we want to talk about. We get stuck on. You know, you're late, for example. You're late, you're late. Or you ignore me. I need more time. You don't ever listen to me, and we'll just stay there. You don't listen to me. You don't listen to me. You don't listen to me. Hey, what would need to happen in order for you to have that space and the bandwidth to listen? Can you help me understand that? Could you also help me understand why that's such a difficult thing? Do you find it difficult? Is that your experience? What's happening? Let me understand what's going on in the emotional internal workings of me, and then when I share it, my partner has an understanding of me, and if I listen, I have an understanding of them. That's what we need to be talking about. Not the terrible thing that happened, but what drove us to that, what's motivating that emotionally and what it is we want to do instead. That's the conversations we want to have.

It's kind of like continually pulling out the tops of the weeds rather than getting the root and getting it out of there.

100 and when. I love that analogy because often what we do is we have weeds that grow in our beautiful relationship. And there's lots of beautiful places and spaces in our relationships. But we have a weed or a pile of weeds in a corner and then we pull up everything. We destroy it all without realizing. No. We just need to handle these few weeds. I pull up all the beautiful stuff and cut myself off from the beautiful stuff. And I cut my partner off from all the beautiful stuff too. Because I've got this patch of weeds that's growing out of control. And what causes us to do that is a little thing called fear. I'm afraid that you're going to hurt me, take advantage of me. And when I go into protection mode, instead of talking about what it is I need to feel safe, I go into reaction mode and I mistreat you to feel safe. I cut you off to feel safe. And you don't need to do that. Safety comes from knowing that I'm safe because I know how to advocate for myself. And you start to see a problem there. If I don't have the ability to advocate for myself, I'm never going to feel safe. I'm always going to go to the place where I feel like I've got to protect myself and react big or go missing. Just get the hell out of Dodge. Exit the back door. Hopefully when I come back it'll all be calmed down. But nothing ever gets addressed in that place. And our finger pointing and our blaming about the person that leaves that won't listen and the person who overreacts is on steroids. Okay, so fear wants us to act right now. But patience, hard as it is, it helps us to see through our misconceptions, our conclusions. Given enough time, most of our enemies will cease to be enemies because waiting allows us to see ourselves in them, to see our part. Patience helps us to see the truth. That in essence, when we fear another, we fear ourselves. When we distrust another, we distrust ourselves. And when we hurt another, we hurt ourselves. That is as principled as the oxygen you breathe. And so nothing good happens when we justify hurting somebody. I say I love it will never go well. Never. And this is why the blame game is going to be the thing that destroys your relationship. Understanding and addressing our part and what we need is More effective than assigning blame, the emotional driver. And yes, it's going to create the need for patience. It's going to create the need for you to understand yourself, to be able to translate those emotions that you're feeling, those things that you want that would remedy what you're experiencing. That's work only you can do. Then you got to be willing to advocate for it, bring it to the table, and then you've got to allow your partner to do the same. Now we can have some productive paths and conversations going forward. Okay. The misconception that not assigning blame means that you're a doormat. Nothing could be further from the truth. You're not a doormat when you love somebody. You're not a doormat when you want to understand. You're actually very strong and powerful and safe in that position. It's where your power lives. Vulnerability and understanding oneself is your power center. And when we give it away to attack, you lose your power and you have to defend it. It puts us in a place of fear. That often gets left out is the understanding of oneself. If somebody says, you hurt me, I could in my own conclusion, go, yeah, maybe now you know what it feels like to be me.

Yeah.

Or I might say, you hurt me. Yeah, well, that shouldn't hurt. You know, get over it. Because it doesn't hurt me when you say that to me. So that should be fine. Right. It can take us down those pathways. But if I say, this hurt me and this is where I go and this is what comes up for me, it creates a lot of struggle for me. Oh, well, that's a totally different thing. Now, I understand that. It's different than probably the way I interact with that.

Yeah.

But, gosh, if it makes you go there, what can I do differently? How can I support you with that? And by the way, that's the only thing we can do for a person who has emotional experiences outside of us is to support it. And you start to understand with that example how important the understanding is.

Yeah, it's everything. Because otherwise their words don't mean anything to you. Because if you're only looking at the world through the lens of your own experiences, then no one else's experiences matter. And we all know that's not a.

Good way to live. Exactly. That's exactly right. And so you're not going to be on the same page. You're not going to feel and experience things. The same things might trigger you that don't trigger your partner. Those are the things we need to pursue to understand, don't beat yourself up. If you unintentionally hurt your partner or bring up emotions for them. That's what relationships do. It brings it up in them so we can understand it. Because healing happens when I feel these emotions as a human being and I can understand them and manage them differently. So they're going to come up. And if we fall culprit in our relationships of a pattern of power and control, where my partner says that hurts my feelings, don't do it. And I'm trying to control my partner to make myself feel better, you're going to find that's a never ending problem too, because there's always going to be something else that brings up that emotion in your partner that you don't even know anything about. And you're just kind of trying to make yourself smaller and smaller. And then you, you talk about walk on eggshells. That's how that gets created. I don't know what to do anymore. That doesn't fire off my partner and cause them to react. I've stopped doing this and this and this and saying this and this and this like they want me to, but there's going to be that moment where it doesn't work and that emotion comes up in my partner anyway. Okay, what's my conclusion about that? Well, if I'm coming to conclusions I don't understand, we need to pursue the understanding and I need to be able to share that piece of understanding for myself because otherwise we're kind of dead in the water. Nobody can do that part for me. I have to do that for myself. And that's usually the work that's missing. I'm thinking of a handful of clients right now that are caught in this dynamic of blame. And it's so common that I can tell you one person plays what I call the controller and one person the collapser. And what this looks like is somebody called the collapser, okay, is trying to please the person who reacts. Because every time we have a conversation, the reactor, the controller just has these big explosive reactions and the collapser is trying to do everything they possibly can to like soothe that, to bring it down, to avoid that, up to and including saying a bunch of things they don't mean, making promises and agreements that they don't intend to keep just to appease the moment because it freaks me out when I get this huge, big reaction. And so what ends up happening is this person, because of these big huge reactions, is going to go and problem solve on their own, not necessarily include you in the day to day decisions that need to be made, they're going to make promises to you and then dump you in the soup or you're going to feel unsafe, you're going to feel unstable in the relationship. Well, so does the person who's collapsing. It's easy to point fingers at both parties. One, the collapser is going to point fingers at the controller. If you just want to react and say those things and you just calm down, then I'd probably share more with you. And the person who's got these huge big reactions are saying you break all these agreements to me, you promise me things, you never show up, you go missing, you don't include me, you don't understand me, you don't get me. And I just want you to see both are right. That's not the problem. The problem is everybody's got to do an emotional push up. The person who is all dismantled because they run away, they don't have the emotional confidence and self esteem to plant a flag and mean it, they can't hold a boundary. So they themselves are constantly tumbling and self doubt. So it makes it really difficult for them to show up in a relationship even for themselves sometimes. And the person who's overreacting and controlling and pushy, they are such a hot mess, they don't really even know what they want, they're just react, react, react and can't seem to figure out how it is they can't get what they want. And the cause and effect is playing out beautifully here. I hope you can see it where there's. It's not so much who's to blame, it's like one person has got to learn how to understand their emotional disregulation and get clear about what they need and want and what it is they want to say and also be able to hear some truths, some things that are going to maybe hurt for the moment. But would you rather know or not know? Would you rather be a part of the solution or have these solutions forced upon you? And the person who doesn't know how to stick up for themselves and say what they mean and mean what they say because they have no self esteem, continues to please and put up with and go along with. Well, they're a sham and a shell of a person too. There's no winners there. They need to do the same thing, get clear about what they want, what they feel, what they need and gain some confidence about sharing it. Now this same couple can go in a very different direction but everybody's going to be required to do what I call an emotional push up to get there. It's not one person's fault. It's the cause and effect in regards to how we cope with our own emotions. That is our problem, our Achilles heel in the relationship. And if we don't address that, we're probably going to go down the road and recreate it. Because I take me wherever I go. So we can learn it this round or we can learn in the next round, it doesn't matter. But I hope that you can see from that real life story that is same story, many clients, this is very often what happens. And the more we play the blame game for good reason, right? It's all a problem. Your reaction is a problem. You running away and not saying what you mean is a problem. Got it? But in order to go in a different direction, we need a safe place to understand. We need the ability to do a push up. Meaning I take patience and digest my own thoughts, feelings and emotions down into a language that first I can understand so that I can share it with you. And then we've got to have the patience to pursue the understanding of what do we need to do now and where do you go when this happens and what do you need when it does? Wow. Now we've got a recipe. We can do all kinds of great things with that. We can go in a different direction. We can come up with better conclusions, we can gather better evidence which is going to help us show up better. Me, you and us, we can put the train on a completely different track. That's what's required. Not blame, not finger pointing. It's shifting your focus to the ability to manage oneself and asking for what it is you want instead of getting lost in the don't wants. As we strive to allow our partners, whom I'm attempting to co create with, to do the same. Instead of blame, we need understanding. We need solutions. Blame will destroy us. So I leave you with these practical takeaways. Help me understand is a great question. Help me understand why you're so upset right now. Help me understand what's going on for you. Help me understand what you're making up is true in this moment. Those are important things. Because if we don't vet out our conclusions, remember that train is going to run and run and run and run. Also, I need to take a pause and think about what's being shared here. Patience. If you can't enter a conversation from a place of being emotionally regulated, it's best you push the brake pedal and come back to it. Nothing good is going to happen if we're both pointing fingers, blaming, reacting, and taking my emotional pain out on you. It's not going to go well. Never does, never did, never will. And then I want you to be mindful of what you're agreeing to. Don't make promises you don't want to keep. It's important that we learn to build the courage and develop the places and spaces within us to show up and say what we need to say. Safety is created when I know that I can advocate for myself, say what I mean, and know and understand myself. So when you're feeling hurt or afraid or confused, when feeling urgent to react and say and do things you don't really mean, or find yourself reacting to something that has not happened yet, you're just afraid it will. You simply know it's coming. Take a pause, slow down, do many of the things that we've talked about in this podcast episode today and think about what you want instead of blame. Blame is not the answer to resolving your relationship issues. Positive change is possible when the right principles and tools are given to you and practiced. So often we make choices. However, we don't understand the consequences of the choices that we make. I hope through our conversation today you do. Now listen, it's not the things we don't know that's going to trip us up. It's more about the things we think we know for sure but could not be more wrong about that are going to really trip you up in the end. So please, please, please stay out of blaming to the very best of your ability. I would even prefer you to say I want to blame the out of you right now as you stomp out of the room and say, but I'm not. I'm going to go do these things on this podcast and I'll see you tonight after dinner. That would be better. That would be honest. So if you need help right now on any of the things that we've talked about here, you know that blame and a fighting cycle is happening in your relationship and you need some valuable insights and practical advice for the struggle of this negative cycle of blame. Well, I want you to know we got you. You can go to staceybartley.com right now and you can look at the many ways that you too can get the help and the resources that you need to finally get off the train you don't want to be on anymore. Well, let's have a little fun with this, shall we? When you're feeling spun up, this is the coolest thing in the whole wide world. And I know it's going to sound a little hoax, so I just want to throw that on the table. I want you to close your eyes and focus on your breathing and take 10 deep, fast breaths. Just try it because here's what happens as it focuses your mind on your breathing and it takes the pain away, I promise. Try it and then tell me what you think about it. It's pretty cool. Last thing you probably think about doing. Best thing you could probably do. And lastly, each week we choose a theme song for our episode because we want you to feel music. And I love music. And I guess that's really the real reason I just like music. And so I like to come up with a theme song every week. This one I love, but I say that every week. But I really do love this one. This one is a good one. It's by Quincy Jones and his song as Just once. You know, just once, can't we figure out what we keep doing wrong? Why? Why it doesn't last for very long. Just once. And I just think, isn't that the conversation we're all kind of having when it comes to this? Like, what the hell is going on? I'd love to just figure it out. Why does it get good and then go so bad? What happens? Well, you're probably blaming each other. That's what happens. Great theme song. You can check out this song in our entire playlist for every single podcast episode we've ever done by going to Spotify and searching up Love Shack Life playlist. So thank you, listener, for being here. We do this because you matter to us. I want you to know that we want this to go better for you and we want to give you everything we got to ensure that that happens. So until we meet again, know that we send you off with a ton of love and the power to create more moments that are good in your life today. Bye bye for now.

All right, it's time to leave the Love Shack. But before we part ways, we want you to know our door is always open and we'll leave the porch light on. Ready to welcome you back whenever you need a dose of relationship wisdom. For more resources and tools, visit us atlove shack live.com to dive deeper into the topics we've explored and find additional support for your relationship journey. Stay connected by subscribing to our podcast. Thank you for being part of our Love Shack Live community.

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